The world smelled different after lockdown. For 55 days I had been gazing down my street at the unreachable green glow of Parco Valentino; before the pandemic, I walked by the river just about every day. After two months confined to a one-bedroom apartment and the 200m radius of streets around it, months in which going outside meant heading to the bins or the supermarket downstairs, I had gotten used to a palette of walls, roof tiles, asphalt, and parked cars. The existence of so much green space was overwhelming to the senses. I ascertained my social distance, and then… [Read more]

I read between stretches of work, and I also love to procrastinate by reading. I just read The Walk by Robert Walser, which, after a gloomy day, had a soothing affect on me, and felt like an afternoon-long procrastinator’s daydream—beguiling and infuriating—full of surprises. With regards to my reading, I have no system so I’m sharing a few things here I’ve read this year in no order. Earlier this year I read Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter. It’s a school text in Russia but I’d never gotten around to reading it. Some time later I had a dream where Pushkin was… [Read more]

The Australian higher education industry has suffered from sustained and regular cuts over the years. The Australian higher education and research system is largely funded through Government research schemes and teaching grants, which have diminished over time. In 1999, the Australian Government provided 50% of Go8[1] revenue (excluding HECS). In comparison, the Australian Government provided only 35% of Go8 revenue by 2017, with only 24% of revenue recurrent. In 2017, Malcolm Turnbull’s Liberal-National Coalition Government cut $2.1 billion from university funding, and again in 2018 the Coalition, led by Turnbull, slashed $328.5 million in research funding. In 2019, Scott Morrison’s… [Read more]

I have noted before the change that comes over men in these latitudes. Crossing the Line an invisible curtain parts to admit us into a mirror world reflecting back on us. Be it the isolation or the odour of possibility that attaches to these parts, the men seek every opportunity to throw off the habiliments of civilisation to stand naked in their raw state. I speak here of their inner nature. If a man is a violent oaf then out here on the ocean his disposition becomes most plain.

When Australia’s lockdown rules were first announced, my parents were overseas in Mexico. The quickly evolving coronavirus situation meant they had about 48 hours to work out how to: get back into the US before borders shut down; organize a flight home as thousands of other Australians were doing the same; and negotiate their way through the streets, taxis and airports of San Francisco, which was then a global epicenter of the virus, without getting sick. Because the new restrictions demanded two weeks’ quarantine from all international arrivals, this change in plans also meant my parents now had to make… [Read more]

We are sent here by history The lighter gave fire, and was present at the burning The burning of the republic Burnt the names, burnt the records, burnt the archive, burnt the bills Burnt the mortgage, burnt the student loans, burnt the life insurance An act of destruction became creation —Shabaka and the Ancestors, ‘You’ve Been Called’, We Are Sent Here by History The memory feels like a million years ago now, even though it was only January: toxic levels of smoke blanketed the country, forcing people to take refuge in their homes and don face masks, shuttering their… [Read more]

On March 27 Juan Carlos sent me a video taken from his balcony, of police and military enforcing a curfew in Quito. This was not the first time Ecuador has been under curfew: six months ago the government imposed curfews in reaction to mass protests, led by indigenous groups, against austerity measures imposed by the government of President Lenin [sic] Moreno. Had the epidemic not happened we would have been together at a conference in Honolulu, marking two years since we first met at a similar conference in San Francisco. We’ve stayed close ever since, and have spent perhaps 17… [Read more]

When I was twelve years younger and searching for the right combination of words by which to define myself, I used to rip poems out of library books and Blu-Tack them to objects and surfaces in my daily orbit. Tacked to my laptop was a quote by Konstantin Batyushkov, taken from a poem by David Kirby: O heart’s memory, you are stronger than reason’s sad memory And on the inside of a desk drawer, immediately visible whenever the drawer was opened, was a tanka by Yosano Akiko: writes poetry that hand of hers now stealing grapes her… [Read more]

Eventually we are going to emerge from this coronavirus slumber. Broke, chastened but hopefully mostly still alive. And when we do, we will face a different world. I can’t predict just how different things will be, but I can predict one thing. The Government is going to have to deal with a staggering amount of debt. Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg will be looking for coins down the back of every couch, searching the pockets of old trousers for forgotten change and putting that old exercise bike up on Gumtree. Perfectly understandable, of course, but it makes me worried. How… [Read more]

My neighbour, Mr. Bertieri, told me that in ninety-three days he would lose his sight. I asked how he knew this to the day and he said that his wife had told him in a dream. There is a flower, he said, that takes ninety days to open. I would like it to be the last thing I ever see. Would you help me fetch it? High windows lowered soft light into the nursery. The stem was brittle as nestling bone and it stooped into a bud. The gardener’s hands were like cotton. Later I heard that he slept on… [Read more]